Lives Less Ordinary

The Lost Boy: A never-ending journey, part 2

10 Aug 2024

Contributed by Lukas

At the age of 11 in 1985, Salva Dut was separated from his family by the Sudanese civil war. After a decade moving between different refugee camps, an...

The Lost Boy: A never-ending journey, part 1

04 Aug 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Salva Dut is one of Sudan's so-called 'Lost Boys.' Separated from his family at the age of 11 when the civil war reached his village in 1985, Salva wa...

Britain’s infected blood scandal, my quest for the truth

28 Jul 2024

Contributed by Lukas

In the early 1980s Jason Evans' father was given a blood product called Factor 8 to treat his haemophilia, which infected him with HIV. He was one of ...

The family hiding in the bush after leaking Russian secrets

21 Jul 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Nick Stride said too much about his former boss, one of Putin’s closest allies. Nick Stride, a builder from the UK, feared for his family’s safety...

'It's much easier for them to create a spy than catch a spy'

14 Jul 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Anoosheh Ashoori was visiting Iran when he was snatched off the street by security forces. He was falsely accused of espionage, and spent years in one...

Dead Man Walking: The US nun who took on the death penalty

07 Jul 2024

Contributed by Lukas

When Sister Helen Prejean agreed to write to a convicted murderer on Louisiana’s death row in 1982, she had no idea what was coming. She would end u...

My father Faiz: Pakistan’s revolutionary poet, part 2

30 Jun 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Salima Hashmi is a pioneer of political satire on Pakistani TV. But after the dictator General Zia took power in the 1977 military coup, she faced new...

My father Faiz: Pakistan’s revolutionary poet, part 1

23 Jun 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Salima Hashmi grew up in Lahore witnessing the radical poetry of her celebrated father, Faiz Ahmed Faiz. It inspired her own path into art and perform...

The man who finds water in the desert

16 Jun 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Alain Gachet quit a lucrative career in oil to search for water underground. Colleagues told him he was a 'crazy donkey', but he eventually developed ...

Kill or be killed: a climber’s dilemma, part 2

09 Jun 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Beth Rodden escaped her kidnappers, and pushed her body to its limit, following the climber code of whatever hurts makes you stronger. She married her...

Kill or be killed: A climber’s dilemma, part 1

02 Jun 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Beth Rodden was on a dream climbing expedition in Kyrgyzstan when she was kidnapped by Islamist militants. She and her friends spent days moving betwe...

The Hiroshima survivor who's still shouting for peace

26 May 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Setsuko Thurlow knows what nuclear war looks like.She was a 13-year-old schoolgirl when an atomic bomb was dropped on her home city of Hiroshima, Japa...

Lost in lion country and saved by Spam

20 May 2024

Contributed by Lukas

In 2016, when Jenny Söderqvist and Helene Åberg’s car exploded in the middle of the vast Kalahari desert, their supplies and only lifeline to the ...

Painting, prison and two decades in Guantanamo

12 May 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Mistaken for a terrorist, and detained without trial. Art became his refuge.Pakistani taxi driver Ahmed Rabbani was arrested in 2002, labelled a terro...

How I convinced police my dad was a murderer

28 Apr 2024

Contributed by Lukas

On the day his mother disappeared in December 1989, 11-year-old Collier Landry started looking for evidence. He suspected his father, a rich and well...

Balochistan’s mystery benjo man, part 2

21 Apr 2024

Contributed by Lukas

How Ustad Noor Bakhsh, a Pakistani shepherd in his 70s, became a folk music starAfter hunting for four years, Pakistani ethnomusicologist Daniyal Ahme...

Balochistan’s mystery benjo man, part 1

14 Apr 2024

Contributed by Lukas

The epic quest to find an elderly Pakistani musician and his unusual stringed instrumentDaniyal Ahmed is a flute player and anthropologist who spends ...

Exposing Silicon Valley's multimillion dollar fraud

07 Apr 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Erika Cheung went from a trailer park to a top tech company job, but something was off.She knew how to work hard, growing up in a one-bedroom trailer,...

My grandmother walked the rabbit-proof fence

31 Mar 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Maria's grandmother was forcibly taken by Australian officials, but made a daring escape.As children Maria Pilkington's mother and grandmother were bo...

How to talk to guerillas

25 Mar 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Leyner Palacios grew up around volatile armed groups, so he learned to negotiate with them.He comes from a remote forested area called Bojaya, where c...

Behind the locked door

18 Mar 2024

Contributed by Lukas

The Austrian house where a doctor experimented on children.Evy Mages grew up in and out of foster care in 1970s and 80s Austria. But even when she sta...

I cycled across Africa for a place at my dream university

11 Mar 2024

Contributed by Lukas

A handwritten map is all Mamadou Barry had to guide him from Guinea to Egypt.At the age of 24 he had reached a crossroads in his life. Having failed h...

Going cold turkey in a Bangkok prison

04 Mar 2024

Contributed by Lukas

A life shaped by addiction.Australian Holly Deane-Johns had a complicated childhood. Her parents ran an escort agency from their home, and heroin addi...

The Pacific odyssey of a runaway rebel

26 Feb 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Ruth Shaw spent years on ships and islands, trying to outrun her past.She left her home in New Zealand as a young woman, driven away by a traumatic at...

Fugees Family: the football team who became my life

19 Feb 2024

Contributed by Lukas

The extraordinary coach who started a football team but built something much bigger.One day when Luma Mufleh was driving home to Atlanta, Georgia, she...

My dad was Britain's 'most wanted'

12 Feb 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Without realising it, Nick Reynolds had been living his childhood on the run.Early one morning in 1968 he answered his front door, completely obliviou...

Trapped in an icy hell: my 72 day mountain escape

05 Feb 2024

Contributed by Lukas

After crashing high in the Andes, Nando Parrado had to go to the extreme to get out.In 1972, when the plane carrying 22 year old Uruguayan Nando Parra...

A Libyan kidnapping and the words that brought us together

29 Jan 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Lucy Sexton was making a TV series about hostages when her father Joe was abductedLucy and her father Joe Sexton are American journalists. In 2021 Luc...

Discovering my mother was a Vietnamese rock'n'roll star

22 Jan 2024

Contributed by Lukas

A chance email led Hannah Ha to uncover her mother Tam’s forgotten musical legacy.Hannah knew her mother could sing. When she took the stage at kara...

Searching for the last man in the forest

15 Jan 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Jair Candor tracks down remote Amazonian tribes in order to protect them from outsiders.One tribe, the Piripkura has just one member left who’s livi...

Hunting for icons in the underworld, part 2

08 Jan 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Tasoula Hadjitofi tricked a notorious art smuggler to recover Cyprus' holiest relicsWhen war split Tasoula's home country of Cyprus in two in 1974 she...

Hunting for icons in the underworld, part 1

01 Jan 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Tasoula Hadjitofi uncovered a shady network looting her country's most sacred relicsIn 1974 Tasoula's country, Cyprus, was torn in two by war. Distrau...

Love in the time of revolution, part 2

25 Dec 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Pepe and Lucía: the bonfire of young love, a long separation, and rise to presidency.The guerrilla lovers finally meet and fall for each other, but t...

Love in the time of revolution, part 1

18 Dec 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Pepe and Lucía: the guerrilla lovers who became the leaders of UruguayWhen they were younger, José Pepe Mujica and Lucía Topolansky separately join...

An author, his cellmate, and a new beginning

11 Dec 2023

Contributed by Lukas

When award-winning author Alex Wheatle was sentenced to nine months in prison at the age of 18, he thought his life was over. Alex had been born in Lo...

Scams and poetry in Moscow’s underbelly

04 Dec 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Eric Ngalle is now a poet and academic in the Welsh capital of Cardiff, but it's his experiences as a people-trafficked teenager that inspire much of ...

Introducing Amazing Sport Stories

30 Nov 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Sport but not as you know it. A brand new sports storytelling podcast.Imagine being stranded in the “death zone” on one of the world’s highest m...

Unmasking my best friend

27 Nov 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Reality TV producer Johnathan Walton found himself in a plot he couldn't have dreamt up. It all started when a woman helped him when he was locked out...

Becoming Gamal, part 2: Behind the badge

20 Nov 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Gamal Turawa has lived many lives - but never fitted in.First as a black British boy adopted into a white family, then hoodwinked by his father and ev...

Becoming Gamal, part 1: Magic and misadventure

13 Nov 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Gamal Turawa has lived many lives - but never fitted inAs the first openly gay black officer in London's Metropolitan Police, he struggled to find his...

The fisherman and the 'spy whale'

06 Nov 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Joar Hesten's mission to save a whale rumoured to have escaped from the Russian navy.Norwegian Joar Hesten was fishing for cod in the Arctic when he c...

Brazil's loneliest fan and his footballing fairytale

30 Oct 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Tiago Rech went viral when he was the only supporter in the stands at his club's game.In 2012 Tiago Rech was the only fan at a big away match for his ...

Love, Loss and 'Project 22'

22 Oct 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Fleur Pierets and Julian Boom wanted to wed in every country that allowed gay marriage.After falling in love at first sight, the artist couple planned...

38 days: a family adrift in the Pacific

15 Oct 2023

Contributed by Lukas

The Robertsons' boat was attacked by killer whales and started to sink fast Douglas was 16 years old when his parents sold the family farm in England ...

"My friends were arrested, or simply disappeared"

08 Oct 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Tahir Izgil is one of the most highly respected living Uyghur poets. Tahir was born near Kashgar, in Xinjiang province, and from an early age he was i...

Bringing home the prime minister’s gold tooth

01 Oct 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Juliana Lumumba had to fight to reclaim the remains of her father, Patrice Lumumba.He'd been the first prime minister of the Democratic Republic of Co...

The Godmother of Beirut's nightlife

24 Sep 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Under the boot of the Syrian army, Nicole Moudaber brought raves to Lebanon. After sampling the delights of dance music whilst studying abroad in the ...

Dancing in the womb

17 Sep 2023

Contributed by Lukas

A mother, a son, and the discovery of a shared dream. Latifa Khamessi and her son Mohamed Toukabri from Tunisia were inseparable until aged 15 when he...

The invisible child who now shines at Eurovision, part 2

10 Sep 2023

Contributed by Lukas

From the page to the stage: William turns childhood fantasies into reality. In London, William Lee Adams is feeling disillusioned with his job, when a...

The invisible child who now shines at Eurovision, part 1

03 Sep 2023

Contributed by Lukas

A bond between brothers, a coming-out story, and an international song contest. William Lee Adams is one of the leading voices covering the Eurovision...

Miracle on the ocean floor

27 Aug 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Harrison Okene spent three days trapped in an air pocket in a sunken ship.Harrison was the ship's cook, and he'd been in the bathroom when the tugboat...

Indiana Jones: The kids who remade a blockbuster

20 Aug 2023

Contributed by Lukas

In 1982, two Mississippi boys recreated a $22m film, shot-for-shot, on their pocket money.Chris Strompolos and Eric Zala were aged 10 and 11. Their mi...

The woman who fell from the sky, part 2

13 Aug 2023

Contributed by Lukas

How a jump changed daring parachutist Tony Osornio's life forever.Tony was Mexico's best precision skydiver and the first woman to join her country's ...

The woman who fell from the sky, part 1

06 Aug 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Tony Osornio would go to dangerous extremes to keep skydiving.She was born into a conservative family, and decided to marry the first man who asked in...

Bradford 12: The Asian youth who took on the racists, part 2

30 Jul 2023

Contributed by Lukas

By 1981, Pakistani-born immigrant Tariq Mehmood had endured years of violent racism in Britain. When he heard that gangs of white skinheads – with a...

Bradford 12: The Asian youth who took on the racists, part 1

23 Jul 2023

Contributed by Lukas

As a Pakistani immigrant teenager in 1970s Britain, Tariq Mehmood endured homelessness and years of violent racism. He found shelter and wisdom in a l...

I save chimpanzees and they've saved me

16 Jul 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Stany Nyandwi's rescued chimpanzees helped him through war and loneliness.As a young boy Stany made money selling sugarcane and worked as a 'houseboy'...

Who is this kneeling man?

09 Jul 2023

Contributed by Lukas

My search for the truth about my father and Martin Luther King’s assassination.Leta McCollough Seletzky grew up knowing that her father was the ‘k...

How I survived a pirate hijack

02 Jul 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Marine engineer Chirag Bahri was trapped for eight gruelling months on a chemical tanker.Chirag loved his job working in the engine rooms of huge comm...

Love, war, and the cutting room floor

25 Jun 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Mariam and Mohammed are Yemeni filmmakers who turned the lens on their own relationship.Mariam Al-Dhubhani and Mohammed Al-Jaberi's love story started...

He was almost a mass shooter – an act of kindness stopped him

18 Jun 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Aaron Stark now works to raise awareness around why mass attacks happen.Aaron had a chaotic and violent childhood, and by the time he was a teenager h...

Teenage dreams on the Indian Ocean

11 Jun 2023

Contributed by Lukas

At the age of 13 Laura Dekker fought for her right to sail solo around the world.Laura comes from a family of sailing enthusiasts, and her father taug...

'Don't anger the monster', part 2

04 Jun 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Rowena Chiu was kept silent for 20 years by former film boss Harvey Weinstein. Rowena thought that speaking up about her alleged sexual assault by Wei...

'Don't anger the monster', part 1

28 May 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Rowena Chiu on surviving the Hollywood sexual predator Harvey Weinstein.Rowena was just 24 when she became an assistant to Weinstein at his film compa...

Sugar sandwiches and smarts: a poor kid's fairytale ending

21 May 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Raised by addicts, Dr Katriona O'Sullivan defied the odds to become a university lecturer. Her parents were addicted to heroin, she was neglected and ...

Lola the bare-knuckle drag queen

14 May 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Martial arts kept him out of jail, but drag artistry made him whole.Diego Garijo was bullied for his femininity as a child, so as he grew up he toughe...

I was there the night Emmett Till was taken

07 May 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Wheeler Parker is Emmett Till's cousin and the last surviving witness to his abduction.Emmett's brutal murder in Mississippi in 1955 sparked a wave of...

Tanzania’s hip-hop politician

30 Apr 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Joseph Mbilinyi pioneered Swahili rap and then turned to politics, but ended up in jail.In the 1990s he'd become one of Tanzania's biggest stars under...

'Brother. do. you. love. me.' The SMS that changed our lives

23 Apr 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Brothers Manni and Reuben Coe, and the text that prompted a lockdown rescue mission.Manni was living in Spain when he received this troubling text fro...

'Prison Break' and my escape from Manus Island

16 Apr 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Tricks from a hit TV show held the key to Jaivet Ealom’s audacious dash for freedom. As a student in his native Myanmar, Jaivet Ealom became obsesse...

The spy who wanted to bring down apartheid: Part 2

09 Apr 2023

Contributed by Lukas

ANC spy Sue Dobson infiltrated the South African government. Then her cover was blown. After training, Sue had got a job within the government's propa...

The spy who wanted to bring down apartheid, part 1

02 Apr 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Sue Dobson was a white South African who risked her life as an ANC secret agentSue was a student when she was first recruited as a spy for the African...

Bringing the Muppets to Moscow

26 Mar 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Natasha Lance Rogoff’s daunting task of making Sesame Street in post-Soviet Russia.In the early 90s, American journalist Natasha Lance Rogoff was co...

My life in seven swimming pools

20 Mar 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Amjed Tantesh is determined to teach kids in Gaza to swim no matter how many pools he has to build.Finding freedom in the water as a child, Amjed want...

The Ukrainian opera singer nearly silenced by a bullet

13 Mar 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Sergiy Ivanchuk dreamed of stardom, before he was shot in the chest by Russian soldiers.He was a volunteer helping refugees escape Eastern Ukraine dur...

I didn’t know I was part of an experiment

06 Mar 2023

Contributed by Lukas

When Greenlander Helene Thiesen was just seven, two Danish men came to take her away.In 1951, Greenland native Helene Thiesen was just seven years old...

Eyes on the prize: Pakistan’s first trans film star

27 Feb 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Rejected by family and society, trans actor Alina Khan was forced to spend time on the streets of her native Lahore as a child. Through dance, she fou...

Becoming Blair 'the Flair': a boxer on the run, part 2

20 Feb 2023

Contributed by Lukas

In the ring, Blair finds calm amidst the chaos of his life. Back in the US Blair Cobbs falls again on hard times; homeless in Philadelphia his boxing...

Becoming Blair 'the Flair': a boxer on the run, part 1

13 Feb 2023

Contributed by Lukas

From Beverly Hills to hiding from the law with his dad, Blair’s seen it all. To help him get through the tough times – and there’d be quite a fe...

The mystery of the tartan twins

06 Feb 2023

Contributed by Lukas

A baby left in a car, another in a telephone box. It would take decades to find out why.When he was just a baby, David McBride made headline news in N...

Breaking my addiction to war

30 Jan 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Fergal Keane's work as a war correspondent was destroying him, but he couldn't stop.It was his job as a BBC journalist to help the audience make sense...

The fearless former nun fighting for India's seamstresses

23 Jan 2023

Contributed by Lukas

From convent to marriage to factory floor, Thivya Rakini will stand up for herself, and you. From an early age she's fought for what's right. As a chi...

Learning to live with the voices in my head

16 Jan 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Debra Lampshire started hearing voices aged five. Comforting at first, they soon took control.The voices became so visceral and intense that Debra had...

Rebel gunmen in Ugandan skies

09 Jan 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Pilot Firoz Khimji witnessed his country's wars from above. Then conflict came for him.For most of his life, Uganda had been unstable, but he'd been a...

Coming out as India’s first gay prince

02 Jan 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Prince Manvendra Singh Gohil risked everything when he faced his parents and societyHe was next in line to a centuries-old royal dynasty in the Indian...

The secrets of a slave ship in an Alabama swamp

26 Dec 2022

Contributed by Lukas

Journalist Ben Raines went in search of a sunken ship with a dark history.A phone call out of the blue had set him on his hunt for the Clotilda, an Am...

Searching for my sister, the "keeper of memories"

19 Dec 2022

Contributed by Lukas

Nakuset blocked out painful memories of being removed from her indigenous Canadian familyNakuset only goes by one name and it means "The Sun" in her i...

Guns, guards, snarling dogs: a child migrant’s story

12 Dec 2022

Contributed by Lukas

Javier Zamora travelled alone from El Salvador to the US when he was just nine years old.He had been living with relatives after his parents migrated ...

The Palestinian tapes, part 2

05 Dec 2022

Contributed by Lukas

In 2020, Mo’min Swaitat unearthed a treasure trove of lost Palestinian music in an abandoned building. Out of thousands of dusty cassettes there was...

The Palestinian tapes, part 1

28 Nov 2022

Contributed by Lukas

Mo’min Swaitat unearthed a vast trove of forgotten Palestinian music. Not only did it hold long-lost recordings of his own Bedouin family, but also ...

I hit puberty, then burned down my family home

21 Nov 2022

Contributed by Lukas

At 18 Nikki Owen set fire to the family home – and she didn’t know why. Nikki awaited trial in solitary confinement, but her father searched for...

He knocked on my door and said: 'I believe you'

14 Nov 2022

Contributed by Lukas

How the friendship of a stranger helped Betsy Sailor when she needed it most. Betsy was living alone at university in the late 1970s when a man broke...

My father’s hidden crimes

07 Nov 2022

Contributed by Lukas

Analía’s father was accused of being a government torturer — he said it was a lie.A phone call turned Analía Kalinec’s comfortable life upside...

The child spy and her secret agent parents

31 Oct 2022

Contributed by Lukas

Sue-Ellen Doherty was trained by her parents to spy for Australia during the Cold War.For Sue-Ellen Kusher, nee Doherty, growing up in the suburbs of ...

A fake billionaire in North Korea, part 2

23 Oct 2022

Contributed by Lukas

Jim is deep undercover in North Korea — but will he find proof of illegal weapons deals...He'd been sent to the isolated country by a documentary fi...

A fake billionaire in North Korea, part 1

16 Oct 2022

Contributed by Lukas

Jim Latrache-Qvortrup posed as a weapons dealer to expose a North Korean criminal network.Jim was an unusual secret agent. He'd grown up poor in Denma...

Opiyo’s law: Never let fear rule your life

09 Oct 2022

Contributed by Lukas

In September 2020, Nicholas Opiyo awoke to a commotion in his flat. There had been a robbery and all his personal electronics had been stolen. He says...

Hip hop, lies and the ultimate prize, part 2

02 Oct 2022

Contributed by Lukas

Silibil N’ Brains found fame as fake American rappers - but how long can you live a lie?A record deal with Sony, celebrity parties and touring with ...

Hip hop, lies and the ultimate prize, part 1

25 Sep 2022

Contributed by Lukas

The Scottish rappers who fooled the music industry. Gavin Bain was one half of Silibil N’ Brains, a Californian rap duo on the cusp of greatness. Bu...

I was the voice of Bambi – and kept it secret for years

18 Sep 2022

Contributed by Lukas

Donnie Dunagan was a Disney child star in the 1930s before becoming a US Marine.He was born in 1934 and grew up in Memphis, Tennessee, in the midst of...